


The Secrets We Keep

by The Chronicler (AgentFrostbite)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Trilla decides to be a good person, Trilla has a crisis of conscience and decides not to do an Inquisitor thing, Trilla has doubts, Was it just the route I took back to the Mantis or did anyone else see like no stormtroopers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26773957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/The%20Chronicler
Summary: Bogano is one of - if the propaganda is to be believed - maybe ten words that the Empire hasn't touched. Trilla is looking forward to seeing Kestis's regret over leading the Empire there.Or, Trilla followed theMantisto Bogano, but now that she's leaving, she's not sure she can bring herself to order the planet's discovery.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	The Secrets We Keep

If Trilla believed in such a thing anymore, she'd say Bogano is beautiful.

The Clone War robbed any planet she and Cere ever visited of its beauty. Instead of untouched forest, there were ashes and cinders. Instead of calm blue seas, pollution and blood. Instead of wide open grassland, fire and droid parts and the bodies of a hundred men who died for something they never chose to believe in.

Bogano reminds her of all that she should have seen, and she wants to burn it to the ground for that.

She tells herself that there will be time for that later. Now, she must focus on getting herself and her troops down to the surface undetected. Just because the Empire isn't supposed to know about Bogano doesn't mean Cere will drop her defenses. Just because the motley crew don't know they're being tailed doesn't mean that Trilla is home-free. She places her ship in a shallow ravine near the Vault. The troop drop ship, she lands behind a rock formation, on a solid plain but out of sight of the Latero's ship.

She finds a sharp, sadistic spike of amusement in the fact that she was correct in her assumption about Cordova's enrapturement with the Zeffo and his hiding the holocron among their ancient structures. She just had the exact place wrong.

She waits for Kestis to enter the Vault, then slips in herself. Remaining hidden, she waits as he endures whatever path or trial the Vault forces him through. His hand shakes on the black slate of polished glass. His whole body shudders, and she catches the reflection of his eyes opening. He moves his other hand back and drives his palm into the glass with a cry and enough force to shatter it. She tucks against the wall as he turns around, and there it is.

The holocron.

It glows green where it hovers above the copper-colored plate in the middle. She lets him reach, then unclips her saber and ignites it just before he grabs the holocron.

"Had a bad feeling I'd see you here," he remarks.

"Oh? How uncharacteristically prescient of you," she retorts.

They fight with words, then sabers, and she's annoyed – almost worried – when he forces her back and her lightsaber skitters away. She can grab it in time, and he won't cut her down when she'd defenseless. It's not the Jedi way, after all.

But Kestis does her work for her. She smiles with malicious, mad glee when he grabs her saber, charges…and stops.

Convulses.

Drops to his knees.

"Careful with that thing!" she taunts as she uses the Force to pull the holocron to her. "It's been through hell."

Lightsabers for the Inquisitors are easy to come by. There's a whole rack of spares. She carries no attachment to the one she leaves in Kestis's white-knuckled hands as she slips out of the Vault. Kestis's droid – _Cordova's_ droid – beeps angrily and indignantly, but ultimately decides not to leave his new master. Trilla slips back to her ship with ease, without being seen. She orders the men she brought with her to stay. They'll die, but she hardly cares. She is regretful that she won't get to see the horror on Kestis's face when he realizes that he's brought the Empire another world to devour.

Her fingers hover over the transmission controls. She's ready to report Bogano, Kestis's hideout, her possession of the holocron. But now it's she who stops, she who hesitates, because she and the men on the surface below are currently the only ones who know about the marshy plainland world. If she left now and said only that she had the holocron, no-one would know any better. She has no attachment to the planet, no attachment to the people using it as a safe haven. What's one more world to ravage?

She has what she came for. She should report the location and let the Empire do what they do best: burn and pillage and destroy. Bogano's beauty is undeserved and it shouldn't remain untouched.

But she sees the smile of her Grand-Master, the fondness and reverence he used when speaking about the place, a passing conversation Cere would never know about, and what's left of the good part of her heart – something she doesn't crush only because it gives her more pain and hate to fuel herself with – and her fingers shake.

She falters.

And she wipes Bogano from her ship's memory. She triggers the remote detonation of the troops' dropship that accompanied her to the hidden planet, and Bogano experiences thirty minutes of a burning crater in lieu of a lifetime of suffering.

**Author's Note:**

> So I found Fallen Order and I Am In Love.
> 
> Also, my friends and I are writing a HUGE alternate universe of Star Wars, and it's basically a crossover of my own personal book series (that I haven't written yet...) that works with ATLA-type powers. Does anyone...idk, WANT to see that??


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